Fully Searchable Death Records 1837 to 2006

This means that every death recorded in England & Wales from 1837 to 2006 is listed and records are searchable with as little as just a surname, saving hours of trawling through pages of search results to spot just one ancestor!

This launch sees the completion of a two year project by findmypast.co.uk to make the birth, marriage and death records for England and Wales easier to use.

Over 1,000 people have worked on this project, rescanning 170 years of records and over a quarter of a billion names. Every death that was recorded in England and Wales between 1837 and 2006 is listed and family historians can now search the records with just a surname or with a combination of a last name, first name(s), date range, county or region to find their elusive relatives, without having to search through pages of results to spot just one ancestor.

Not only can people search for their own ancestors, they will also be able to find some famous names that have passed away over the centuries. They include Florence Nightingale, who died in 1910, Arthur Conan Doyle, the British author of Sherlock Holmes who passed away in 1930, and Brian Jones, of Rolling Stones fame, who died in 1969.

Interestingly, John Doe, the name often used to describe an unidentified body, appears 228 times within the records.

Despite Greater London being the smallest county by area, it has registered more deaths per square mile than all of the UK’s largest counties due to it having a higher population as the country’s capital, with 16,660 deaths per square mile compared with Lancashire’s[1] 9,949. However, Yorkshire comes in at number 10 with the lowest number of deaths recorded per square mile, despite being the biggest county by area.

As part of the project to make family history research easier, findmypast.co.uk has also made it possible to search for British ancestors who were born, married or who died abroad by newly scanning 3,875,428 armed forces, overseas and at sea birth, marriage and death records, covering the years 1761-2005[3]. This new development means that searching for ancestors abroad has been made a lot simpler.

Debra Chatfield, Marketing Manager at findmypast.co.uk, said:

“As the first company to publish birth, marriage and death records online back in 2003, findmypast.co.uk remains committed to making family history research more accessible and rewarding. With all the birth, marriage and death indexes now fully searchable, looking for a relative couldn’t be simpler, as family historians can now access these records in one place and by using one simple search”.